French elections ... First Round

Here is another great interactive map from lemonde.fr (results by Departments)

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/vi/0,47-0@2-823448,54-899917@51-899913,0.html

not a lot to say about this first round...

Most positive point for me: Le Pen lost 1 million votes since 2002, people understood that he is not the one to vote for just to challenge the system, which is good, but but... guess a lot of these "votes protestataires" went to Besancenot and the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire, which I am not a big fan of. 15.4% of abstention, not bad at all, almost 60% of abstention for the french people abroad (yeah... time to rethink to adminitsrative requirements to sign up with the consulates, it sucks when you work, and I am sure it is worst in some other cities/countries, at least in SF we have a consulate!!)

second round in two weeks, we will see...

(En Francais) Le Pen... passera ou passera pas

Un posting en Francais pour parler des elections qui arrivent a grand pas.
Une rumeur a couru cette semaine selon laquelle un institut de sondage (le nom m'echappe mais il me semble que ce n est pas un des gros) aurait publie une etude selon laquelle lepen passerait o 2eme tour avec 19% (tout en prevoyant 20% pr Sarko et 18% pour Sego). Bon, un dementi officiel immediat de cet institut a coupe court aux rumeurs, mais nous pouvons quand meme nous demander quelle sera l' ampleur du vote Front National.
Une infographie comparative sur lemonde.fr montre que les intentions de vote FN sont beaucoup plus important cette annee qu'en 2002, c' est pas rassurant tout ca!

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/infog/0,47-0@2-823448,54-880011,0.html

Back from Death Valley

I just came back from a wondeful road trip throughout California with Axelle and Julien.
Death Valley is great, hot (gosh 102 degrees), immense, and dry (we quickly understood that the signs saying "caution cows" were a huge joke for no cows could really survive there). We camped there, between two RVs, went to the Local saloon in Furnace Creek, the only city with trees in the whole Valley (at some point you HAVE to find some shadow), and checked out the tourist designated places.
We then took 395 (which I totally recommend that road is beautiful) that crosses Mammoth, the Sierras etc to end in Nevada, and we spent the last night of the trip in the confort of the house in Tahoe. It all went way too fast!!
I put our pictures online... http://picasaweb.google.com/anne.montastier

ouuuuuh shiny useless stuff

Here is a charm for your cell phone with a tiny living plant in a tiny little bottle with pretty colors like blue or pink :) the plant survives for weeks by itself, how great and useless... and all that happiness for only 9 bucks
if you have time have a look at the website, it s crazy!!!

http://www.strapya-world.com/categories/12_71_1175.html